Tuesday, August 26, 2014

First published in DelawareLiberal on 8/26/2014 by ProgressivePopulist

The fruitless search for moderate allies in the middle east is
absurd. I'm an optimist, but this idea is ridiculous. Moderate nations
to create both a political and military front to stop and roll back the
ISIL Caliphate? Syria? Iran? They were "enemies" before being
considered as future allies.

But there are other potential allies
to lead the effort to roll back ISIL because they are terrified of these
whacked out warriors; the recent attack by Egypt and the UAE on the
Libyan militants gives some hope for some form of coalition that could
take on this task. Diplomacy with ISIL seems a total fantasy.

Add
to the 500,000 or so Egyptian and UAE boots on the ground, if not
committed elsewhere, the Saudi's 250,000, Jordan's 100,000 and maybe
20,000 from Kuwait and Qatar and you're talking close to a 100 to 1
advantage over ISIL on the ground. A number of these countries have
both heavy firepower and some air power. Then you've got a serious
advantage if they have the will to win. Iran with their 500,000 active
military could seriously sweeten the pot, especially in Iraq and slam
dunk at least ISIL containment. Contained where I don't know for this
stateless bunch.

And we're going to have to ask ourselves quite
seriously who is the worst threat to our security; Assad or ISIL ? The
answer is pretty obvious to me.
And, how about Israel? They've
got much more to worry about with ISIL than even currently on their
plate with Hamas. They can add another 175,000 active military plus
lots of experience with the IDF. Maybe it is time to refocus their
security priorities and payback for all the military toys we've funded
over the years.

But make no mistake here, these are no "moderates"
let alone budding democracies. This includes Israel. Democracy, sort
of, moderate no. Jordan is creeping toward democracy. Funding for
ISIL is coming from within most of those "allies". Just as it is for Al
Qa'ida. Hell, we trained ISIl in the form of the Yarmouk Brigade in
Jordan and armed them. Some of those arms are now showing up in Iraq !
So are our strategies taught by us to the Iraq Sunni opposition.
Sound familiar? Afghanistan-Al Qa'ida and the Taliban aided by the U.S.
to oppose the Russian occupation?

To have fantasized that we
might have sided with Syrian rebels to oppose Assad while siding with
Maliki was ridiculous. That would have generated the ISIL caliphate and
headquartered it in Damascus. To have fantasized that with the
obliteration of Bin Laden and the Al Qa'ida central command we were on
our way to victory is somewhat dampened by the metastasising of the
organization throughout middle east and africa. At least one survey of
opinions of non-Al Qa'ida affiliated jihadist rebels in Syria revealed
approval of the 9-11 attacks and the hope for more to come.

The
truth seems to be that the goals of both ISIL and Al Qa'ida seem quite
similar. For that matter, the religious goals of the Saudi power
structure and the Pakistan military intelligence network (ISI), though
the Saudi's are more geographically ambitious than the ISI who seem
focused on the Af/Pak region. This was revealed in the Wikileaks
document dump which included statements to that effect from the U.S.
State Department.

Yet, the War on Terror seems focused on Al
Qa'ida, not the totality of the Jihadist movement, all focused on the
same creed and goals. In spite of huge increases in the homeland
security budget, not to mention NSA and the CIA's budgets, we seem
utterly shocked, just shocked at the emergence of ISIS.

Isn't it
time to refocus? The hanging of an ISIL flag on the fence at the White
House, as reported by ABC news should be a bit of a jolt. I don't
think the homeland is facing an invasion by these crazies any time soon
but terror strikes are well within the realm of possibility.

Looks
like its time to abandon all old assumptions and rethink alliances with
new creativity and realism. No. Not take on this challenge alone or
with U.S. military boots on the ground. There's close to a million
active military boots of those already in the region from among the
middle east nations with close borders and very much to lose to the
Caliphate. Brilliant diplomacy with those most threatened by the
Caliphate can provide ample military response to their immediate threat
and containment. Obama is both a very cool head in this terrifying
drama and a brilliant thinker, in and out of the box. He can do this if
the war drum bangers don't overwhelm us with fear and disinformation.

If
we haven't already, I'm hopeful Sec. Kerry can pull those most
threatened together in some kind of summit. And perhaps hammer out a
deal where, if invited, we provide hardware and strategic advice,
providing we can cut deals with each to cut funding for Jihad from
within their own ranks. The Saudi comes to mind especially here. And
in return for funding/military hardware, we negotiate with each for
abundant intelligence on ISIL and all Jihadist groups and very strong
screening on their end of travelers heading west to help us identify the
crazies heading our way.

A cold, steely recognition is needed
that we're not dealing with moderates by any stretch. And recognizing
that the military hardware involved may well be used against us by some
elements in their midst down the road. And a clear understanding that
we're not dealing with totally reliable partners here given the
mercurial environment they've had to operate in to survive.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

First Published in DelawareLiberal on August 20, 2014 by ProgressivePopulist

Do you dread opening your daily newspaper and internet news source
each morning like I do? Ferguson, Wilmington, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan
and countless other hotbeds of conflict, hate and destruction. And
America is at the center of it all.

We've managed to build a
society that is earning us both disappointment and hostility across the
continent and the globe. About the only undisappointed and non-hostile
are the very few reaping the very rare but enormous economic benefits
from the version of capitalism we are practicing as a nation. And
protecting as a government.

The research I read tells me
mainstream people, foreign and domestic, look upon America with
skepticism and distrust and certainly do not buy the myth of American
exceptionalism with the possible exception of those exploited people in
this hemisphere whose local economies pay them so little they view our
minimum wage jobs as a way out of their dire poverty.

The foreign
hostility we're experiencing was not created by President Obama. It is
a function of post WWII foreign and economic policies built by multiple
generations and bi-partisan consensus. Decades of economic
exploitation and corporate plundering, with military interventions to
protect those interests and the repressive foreign regimes we've bought
off to support our endeavors are the causes of the ravaging fires in the
middle east and immigration crises from the south of our borders.

Our
domestic focus on protecting our corporate interests at the expense of
addressing the interests of our mainstream population and resulted in a
massive increase in domestic poverty, joblessness and racial conflict.
Where there is no current conflict, there is endemic hopelessness.

But
here's where the Democratic Party can make a huge difference. The
Party can be a key vehicle for solutions by departing from the
incrementalism it has been timidly offering as solutions to problems
requiring much bigger thinking. Many of the big ideas are marinating in
the policy prescriptions of the progressive movement within the Party.

Now
is the time for the Party and its candidates to offer reforms on both
our domestic and international fronts and start the national
discussion. Virtually no national discussion is currently underway in
spite of the very obvious state of crisis our nation is in. The DNC,
our State Party organizations, President Obama and the Congressional
Democrats can and should be facilitators of this discussion through
neighborhood, internet and national leadership forums and meetings. It
can start with this mid-term election and continue through the 2016
Presidential election.

I'm hopeful
our Delaware DNC delegates and Congressional delegation might agree that
patch work solutions are not getting us where we need to be and get on
board with ambitious initiatives to reform and revolutionize our
declining society.

If the task is perceived as too challenging,
then help us retool to retire the myth of American exceptionalism and
work to build a smaller, more modest and humble empire.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

So, cops with full blown military gear, weapons and vehicles? Yea, I
know, bought on fire sales by locals from feds surplus. But really?
Is this what our social order has come to? Press arrested, peaceful
protesters arrested and battered with rubber bullets? Really ?

Long
ago my firm was commissioned to do advertising to recruit minority and
women cops for the city of Houston. I learned a lot from that,
including reading about the psychology of those attracted to that field,
regardless of race or gender. Our campaign was almost too successful
as we produced "too many" applicants. Psych. profile....authoritarian,
superiority, got off to power over others. Bullies empowered by a
uniform. Our message was different, more idealistic community builders,
but the others came anyway.

I am watching Ferguson, MO with
horror. Yet another black kid gunned down. The sketchy research says a
couple of hundred a year, unarmed. Even the Cato Institute research
says that in 2010 there were 1,575 cases of police brutality, 1/4 of
which involved police guns and stun guns, with 247 civilian fatalities.
Mint Press data says such brutality reports account for nearly 24 % of
all misconduct reports made public. The vast majority of these are
involving black male citizens.

So what we have there in Ferguson
is a full blown war against the people. Not just the few who looted and
damaged property, deserving to be taken off the streets to keep others
safe. But, massive cadres of militarized riot cops against
demonstrators and those trying to cover and get the story out.

If
you've been in peaceful protests of some scale, you know what I'm
talking about. Cops on very nervous, scared horses trampling
protesters; holding onto a tree, I saw a young woman's ankle broken by a
charging horse cop. Cops in riot gear when there was no riot. And a
mayor proclaiming "Haliburton's board has a right to meet here", without
regard to the people's peaceful speech on the streets below. Or,
protesters with signs relegated to "protest zones" which were cages,
blocks from the political convention center? Rational? The "safety" of
the convention attendees, of which I was also one as well as a
protester.

So, here you have it now in full view, in all its
ugliness. And you may be wondering why Anonymous, the radical hacker
group has injected themselves into this Ferguson story with a pledge to
help mobilize and empower the people to advocate their right to now have
to cower to the "peace officers" in their midst and to impede the
communications of the Ferguson police department.

Why these
outsiders? Because the insiders, the local elected officials, have
been proven impotent to stand with the people, demand a full accounting
of the events leading up to this latest killing of a kid and administer
peaceful resolution to the people's grievances.
Instead,
militarized cops are unleashed on the citizens of Ferguson to administer
authoritarian brutality. If this isn't a police state, what then would
you call it?

Friday, August 8, 2014

First Published in DelawareLiberal on August 8, 2014 by ProgressivePopulist

With the middle east aflame, isn't it time to rethink what we in the
U.S. have misled ourselves into believing, that we've got a Nuclear
and Missile defense system? No, what we have is an aging, rusting
Nuclear and Missile offense system. Specifically, a retaliatory offense
system.

We're kidding ourselves to still believe that amateurish
government propaganda that somehow these systems are protecting
anybody. They are decrepit killing systems designed to respond to an
attack by trying to take out those who took out a bunch of our people.

John
Oliver has thoroughly debunked the mythology that we're in good hands
with the Defense Department. The recent revelations about the cheating
scandals with the Navy and Air Force officer Missile Corps have done a
pretty good job of diminishing any remaining confidence we might have.
And Eric Schlosser's book published in 2011, Command and Control,
should have gotten our attention on the scores of near misses on Nuclear
Weapon "accidents".

But frankly, none of this has gotten hardly
anyone's attention, most particularly the media. So, we soldier on with
the fantasy that we're protected. Yea. Remember diving under your
wooden desk in drills in school. Felt safe, didn't you? I wasn't all
that sharp but I didn't.
You budget hawks ought to be in uprising
over the $8 billion or so we spend on the Nuke stockpile maintenance and
infrastructure budget annually; 25% for warhead parts replacement and
75% for facilities and staff. One billion of that is to maintain the
production complex. And we stopped producing in 1989. But all of this
is chump change compared to the $50 billion total U.S. Nuke
appropriations budget.

All this for the 7,700 active and inactive
warheads we maintain, 1,950 of which are deployed; happily this latter
nuke deployment is set to reduce to 1,550 in our agreement with Russia
by 2018. This data is provided by Ploughshares, a peace group.
Speaking of peace groups, remember the huge worldwide anti-nuke
demonstrations in the 80's? I didn't either until reminded.

But
all the inventory is not only rusting, is is degrading in potency with
major questions about whether there'd still be a big bang should, heaven
forbid, they ever be used. Intentionally. In the unintentional
category, Schlosser's 6 years of research on his book reveals they
didn't work either in "mistakes" by the Nuke Corp in documented
incidents of nuke bombs that fell out of the U.S. skies onto U.S. soil
in New Mexico, South Carolina, Arkansas, North Carolina, Texas and
Georgia, landing happily with just a dull thud.

As for the so
called missile defense system, no wonder there are reports of very low
morale in the Missile Corp, given that our most likely responses would
be to such nuclear armed states as N. Korea, Pakistan or maybe in a long
shot, China. Why? Because military experts say ICBM's with those
destinations would have to survive overflight over Russia. Some might
want to add Russia back on the target list, given their 8,500 nuke
arsenal, about half of the nuke armed world inventory of 17,300
warheads.

Apparently the morale problems are reflected in the
cheating on officer readiness testing, as this bunch is feeling very
insecure about the necessity of their jobs and appreciation for what
they do down in those silos. Questions too are being asked about their
command leaders, training and discipline.

Maybe, Delaware
congressional delegation, it is time to rethink this stuff after 50
years of pretty much status quo and take a hard look at scaling up
Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system for the U.S. After all, we
did fund its development and very successful deployment in the current
Gaza conflict. And while we're at it, maybe give the Palestinians a
protective Iron Dome if there's a spare lying around.

Monday, August 4, 2014

This blog first appeared in DelawareLiberal on August 4, 2014 by ProgressivePopulist

The CNN Belief Blog ran an article over the weekend about U.S.
Archbishops living lives of grandeur in huge, million $ plus estates
whilst their flocks struggle to put food on the family table.

It
is found
here:http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/08/us/american-archbishops-lavish-homes/?sr=fb080214lavishhomes2pInteractiveLink.
This photo, published in the DallasMorningNews blog is one of a
variety of less than modest domiciles lived in by ten Archbishops who
apparently did not get the memo on lavish lifestyles from the Pope.

This
house is the residence of Archbishop Joseph Myers, Newark, N.J.
According to the report, the original $500,000 house is putting on an
$800,000 addition of his weekend/retirement retreat. The new wing
includes an exercise pool, hot tub, 3 fire places and a library. Yes,
that's the Newark, N.J. you're familiar with.

Full disclosure:
I'm either an atheist or agnostic and a"fallen away" Catholic,
depending on mood. And, I spent a couple of years in the 70's as member
of the board of a group called the National Association of Laity
attempting, with great futility, to assist in reform of the Catholic
Church. One of our projects was to fly around the country meeting with
Bishops, often in some of these residences, persuading them to open up
their books to disclose the assets of their diocese to their flocks; we
used various techniques devised by allied c.p.a.s and attorney's to
motivate those resisting our demands. It worked because for a brief
period, all of the diocesan books were opened and reports published.
Sadly, the local flocks, whom we thought would be really interested in
the holdings of the Church, allowed those same books to close after a
couple of years. We were wrong. No one gave a damn.

About Me

Moved to Wilmington, Delaware in mid-2013. Resided in Houston, Texas for 45 years. A widower, married Julie Jackson in 2007. Retired as a hospital marketing consultant in 2001.Have been a Democratic Party political activist for most of my adult life, organizing and mobilizing for the Party and its candidates. Consider myself a progressive populist. Early career included running communications for 35 campaigns. Have formed and led committees dealing with voter mobilization and precinct organizing, counter voter suppression and strategy.Co-founded the Progressive Populist Caucus of the Texas Democratic Party. Have served on the Texas Democratic Party Platform Committee numerous times. Also an active organizer for the anti-war movement since Vietnam and was active in the civil rights movement.